LOCK.

That’s the message that Will sent us, when we asked him what exactly it is we’ll be stealing.

We have no idea what the hell he means, and Kasey suggested that we take a few days to think it over. We’ll be regrouping at the Ghost Office tonight to discuss it. So far as I know, nobody’s thought of a new angle yet, but we tend to think better as a team, and now we’ve all had time to give our brains a break, so. I have a good feeling about it. We’ll figure something out.

First, though, I want to show Raj what I did with the yard. I still have the key that he loaned me yesterday, so Aiden and I let ourselves into the house, pulling off our shoes by the door.

“Morning, boys,” Noah calls. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, his hands folded around a cup of coffee. Aiden gives him a nod and heads upstairs to track down Raj.

I want to see how Noah’s doing after last night, so I dip into the kitchen. He turns away when I step around the counter, and I hesitate, unsure.

Maybe he regrets talking to me. Maybe he was too drunk, and he didn’t mean to say anything that he said.

But he reaches for a cabinet and opens it, then pulls out another mug. He silently offers it to me, and I take it.

“Doing okay?” I ask, as he pours me some coffee.

He gives me a bleary look that I suspect has nothing to do with a hangover. “Guess so.”

I open the bottle of milk sitting on the counter, feeling a little awkward, wondering what to say.

“How’s Raj?”

“Still asleep.” A tiny smile flits across Noah’s face. “He didn’t even drink that much, I swear.”

“Did you guys peek at the yard? You better not have!”

“No.”

“Good. Wait here, I’m gonna put up the lights, real quick.”

I take two big gulps of my coffee, then dart outside to see how everything looks.

I’m excited about this, stoked for everyone to see it. Even Aiden - who showed up when it was already dark and everything was only half-finished - doesn’t have a clear idea of what it looks like.

This was a complicated design, and I was trying to replicate a place that I’ve never been to, but I think it turned out. I’ll have to wait and see what Raj says.

Nerves spark in my stomach. I know that this probably isn’t what he was envisioning when he asked me to plant the backyard, but - hopefully, that won’t matter.

I step out onto the grass and quickly hang the lights, the final touch. They’ll have more of an impact at night, but even now, they add a soft, muted glow to the plant life. I step back to take a look, right as the back door opens again.

Noah, Aiden, and Raj join me in the yard.

“Ugh.” Raj rubs his hands over his eyes. “Advil, give me strength. Noah, I’m no longer mad at you for barging into my room last night and forcing me to eat a bunch of bread.”

“That’s what I thought,” Noah says, nodding sagely. He steps out from behind Raj, gets an eyeful of the yard, and freezes. “Um. Raj.”

Aiden has already noticed. He has a hand pressed over his mouth, blue eyes wide and roaming.

“I’m too old for this kind of hangover,” Raj groans. “Just kill me, already-”

“Raj,” Noah repeats.

Raj drops his hands from his eyes and stops, his gaze caught by the view. I wait, my breath held, but he just looks, and looks, and looks.

All three of them are doing that, for fuck’s sake, just staring, not a word of feedback, and now I’m hit with the sudden fear that I missed the mark in a major way.

“Uh,” Raj finally says. “Where - am I, right now?”

Oh, god. I fucked this all up. Why didn’t I just order all the grass he wanted?

“Okay, so, I can explain!” I twist my fingers together, trying not to look as anxious as I am. “This is my best attempt at recreating a Hawaiian rainforest, but out of plants that are native to this state. I know it’s not an exact replica, um. Like, for example, we do have a eucalyptus tree that’s native to this area. It’s not the same kind that grows in Hawaii, but once it starts to get big, it’ll be really beautiful, I promise. And I know that there’s not a lot of lawn, exactly, or grass, but I left room to play and run around, and the classic green monoculture lawn isn’t actually very good for the soil. I just - you were talking about how pretty it was in Hawaii, and how you missed that, after you moved, so I… yeah. And this gap - I left that so you can plant a tree when the baby gets here, and then they can - grow up - together.”

My face is turning a burning red. Someone needs to say something, or I’m going to start panicking. Did I actually do a terrible job, or? I felt so good about it, yesterday!

Raj steps onto the dark green pathway of grass that I left winding through the mini rainforest. His feet leave a path of disturbed morning dew in their wake. He stops again, staring.

“Everything here is natural to this climate,” I forge on, desperate to defend myself. “You’d be amazed how many evergreen things can look tropical, seriously, and this means that you won’t need to do any mowing, or use too many pesticides or whatever, so - you’ll save some money, and-”

“Jamie,” Raj says. “Holy. Shit.”

I did my research on this one. I looked up photos of all the various places in Hawaii I might want to emulate. In the end, I’d focused on the rainforest covering the mountains of the Nā Pali Coast. It looked like a distant cousin to the primeval forest where we found the old church. Old and powerful, but also stunningly bright, and swimming with life.

I read all about the different plants that grow there.

How ancient Hawaiians used the leaves of the hala tree to make hats and baskets, sandals, and even roofs. I read up on wild plants that grow in the wet understory at low elevations, producing sweet, red fruit with a coffee bean buried at the core. Nettles that don’t sting, but rather produce an inner bark that can be beaten into cloth, or boiled into tea.

I read about 'Ākia, a dense shrub with narcotic effects. In days past, it was crushed up and thrown into saltwater ponds to make the fish drunk, easier to catch.

The Banyan trees that drop their roots from on high towards the ground. These eventually grow into new trunks, until it’s impossible to discern which one came first. There are sixty different kinds of these, in Hawaii.

So I went with greenery, a lot of greenery. Ferns and bushes and shrubs, fanned out or growing close together, depending on what they need. With Aiden’s help, I placed boulders, round and smooth ones in all different sizes. Perfect for a kid to climb on. Rather than keeping the plants organized by appearance or style, I have them grouped with their companions, which means the heights and kinds vary.

Here and there amidst the thick greenery I put splashes of color. Bright, beautiful plants native to this state, that emulate some of the vivid species endemic to Hawaii. Instead of planting a kookoolau shrub, I put a seep monkeyflower. Instead of a white hibiscus, I put a thimbleberry. But I think the overall effect matches appropriately, and it should be more in sync with the wildlife here. As evidenced by the finch currently perched on the clumped stems of the thimbleberry.

The new rainforest is already busy pulling water out of the air. A soft, early-morning mist is catching on the tallest of the plants, dripping its way down to the lower ones.

Everything looks very calm and peaceful out here, except for me. I’m getting closer and closer to a stress-meltdown the longer Raj goes without saying anything.

“It’ll look better when the trees grow in!” I add, increasingly desperate.

“Oh, my fucking - Jamie.” Raj swings around to face me, his hands clasped over his mouth. “All I asked you to do was plant some flowers and grass!”

Oh, no.

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I should have shown you my sketch first, I just wanted it to be a surprise, and-”

Raj drops his hands, revealing a ridiculously huge grin. I stop, taken aback.

“Thank you,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t even believe - thank you.”

An immediate rush of relief floods through me. Aiden, who is smiling almost as big as Raj, twines an arm around my shoulders. Noah steps out and touches a finger to the leaves of the red-flowering currant I planted by the fence. The blue-black fruit that will grow there eventually should attract plenty of birds to Raj’s yard, songs for his baby.

“Jesus Christ!” Raj folds an arm around Noah, who blinks in surprise. “Quite the final touch to our project, don’t you think, dude?”

“Yeah,” Noah says, slowly. “Happy for you, man.”

“Happy for us, don’t you mean?” A faint look of confusion crosses Raj’s face. “We’re gonna be chilling out here all the time!”

Noah nibbles his lip. “Are we?”

“Duh. You have to sit here with me and make sure my kid doesn’t - I don’t know. Run off and eat something poisonous, or whatever?”

“Kid’s not gonna be able to run or feed itself for like, years, Raj,” Noah answers, his voice a little hollow.

“Yeah, but-” Raj looks confused again. “So? You’ll still be around, right?” He hesitates, looking at Noah like he can’t conceive of any other scenario. “Right?” he asks, again.

I’m about to jump in and tell them that I absolutely did not plant anything poisonous, not in a yard where children are going to be running around.

But then Noah smiles in that way that dimples his face, and I decide to keep that information to myself.

~~~~

“Do you know that you build beautiful things?” Aiden whispers, an hour or so later.

I can barely wrap my head around what he’s saying; he has one hand exploring my body, the other cupping my head, his weight pressing down on me.

“Is that - why you jumped me - the minute we got home?”

He unzips my jeans, slowly, too slowly. I want to kick them all the way off.

“There were a number of reasons, but that is definitely one of them.”

I let out a little sound as his fingers start sliding beneath the elastic of my boxers. “Would love to hear all the reasons, honestly-”

His tongue dips into my mouth, sweet with caramel from Mugshot. My hands fly up to catch his face, fingers raking through his stubble. He pulls back, keeping our foreheads together, his mouth so close to mine that I can feel his heightened breath on my lips.

I tear his snapback from his head and fling it aside. Chestnut hair tumbles free, releasing a whiff of his shampoo, and of vetiver.

I know we won’t get too much farther today. I can feel the way that Aiden’s heart is racing, see the first sparks of white-blue light starting to gather in his eyes. But that’s okay. Every time we do this, I feel even closer to him. I understand the rhythms and tremors of his body better. I can read his breath and his heartbeat, decipher the hidden messages there.

It’s a level of intimacy that feels like a whole new country - no, a whole new continent, to me.

We’re building beautiful things. Together.

~~~~

“So. Anyone got anything?” A pause. "No? What were you guys doing all afternoon?"

Kasey’s question is met with unfortunate silence.

“Lock,” I say, for the millionth time. The four letters that Will was able to get to us through the ouija board before he disappeared again.

The item we’re going to steal.

“Lock - of hair?” I try.

Kasey frowns. “In a museum?”

“Maybe it’s an object that locks,” Aiden suggests, leaning back against the workbench. “A lock - box? Like a puzzle box?”

“Is it possible we’re looking for a lock, literally?” I ask, and Kasey looks over at me.

“Just a lock? Like a padlock?”

“Did they have padlocks in the early 1800s?” Aiden directs the question to Kasey, whose eyebrows shoot up.

“I’m sorry, do you think I know the specific year that padlocks were invented, off the top of my head?”

“You know everything, I don’t know!”

“Why would it be a lock, though?” Kasey’s eyes narrow again. “What would that have to do with Will? Maybe he meant it’s something that’s locked up, like, securely? Is he telling us to not try to get it?”

“But then why say lock?” I ask. “Why not - don’t, or something?”

“Could lock mean something else?” Aiden chews his thumbnail, staring into the distance as he thinks. “Not a lock, the way we’re thinking of it?”

“John Locke,” I suggest.

“John Locke?” Kasey shoots me a skeptical look. “The philosopher? I guess Will could mean a copy of a book by Locke, but that feels unlikely. Lock…” She closes her eyes, scanning her brain. “There’s a famous painting by Fragonard called The Lock.” She opens one eye and grins at us. “It’s two lovers embracing in a bedroom, with one of them reaching up to lock the door.”

“Love that,” I tell her, and she nods.

“Yep, but that’s definitely not what we’re looking for. Unless Will means for us to break into the Louvre.” She pauses. “Aiden. What do you think?”

“Um.” He rubs his arm. “When I think lock, but not a lock on a door or whatever, I think of - rugby?”

Kasey stares at him. “Rugby.”

“Yeah, in rugby, the lock forward packs behind the two-second-rows in the scrum-”

“Oh, my god. Be quiet, sports-boy.”

“Okay! It’s not like you just asked me-”

“Lock.” Kasey presses her fingers to her temples. “My phone is locked, my account is locked… Lockheed Martin, lockdown, Loch Ness Monster…”

“Oh, cool, let’s go steal the Loch Ness Monster from the nearby regional Confederate museum, shall we? That's just what we need for our ghost summoning.”

“I’m brainstorming, Jamie! Maybe… a wheellock pistol? The museum has guns, we know that. Or a flintlock pistol? That would be more common, in Will’s lifetime…”

“But then why would he say lock?”

No one has an answer to my question. We all fall silent.

Aiden gives a sudden start. “Locket."

Kasey and I stare at him.

“A locket,” she breathes. “A popular way to keep someone you love close to your heart.”

“Were lockets a thing, in the 1820s?”

“Yep, they were around by then.” Kasey fixes Aiden with an excited grin. “Queen Elizabeth I used to give lockets as gifts to the people in her inner circle. Ones with paintings of herself inside. Such a power move. Imagine if you just gave someone a framed photo of your own face as a present.”

“Kase-face. You literally did that to me, on my twentieth birthday.”

“Yes, and you’re welcome, Jamie, but the point is, Queen Elizabeth died in the early 1600s, so. Lockets were definitely around by Will’s lifetime. Women used them for all kinds of stuff. You could keep portraits, letters, good luck charms… a rag soaked in perfume, because it did not smell good, living in a city in the olden days - or now, truthfully, as anyone who’s experienced a 98° day in New York City can tell you-”

“Wait,” I cut in. “You said women used them. So - why would Will? Wasn’t exactly the age of free gender expression, right?”

“That’s true... maybe - oh - oh.” Kasey’s eyes widen. “Oh, my god. You guys! It was hers, the woman who put the poem on Will’s headstone! We’re not stealing a locket that belonged to Will. We’re stealing a locket that belonged to the person who loved him!”

There’s a silence, and then Aiden answers, understanding spreading across his face.

“The photo, a token of his likeness. The headstone chip, a token of his death. The pocket watch, a token of his life. And the locket.”

Kasey nods, smiling to herself. “Yes. A token of his love.”